White House to explore cheaper drug imports
High domestic prices may allow for foreign competition.
WASHINGTON — TheWhite House is cracking open the door to using drugs imported from overseas to combat high drug prices in limited circumstances.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday directed the Food and Drug Administration to create a working group to examine how to safely import prescription drugs from other countries in the event of dramatic price increases for a drug produced by one manufacturer and not protected by patents. Such imports “could help address price hikes and supply disruptions that are harming American patients,” Azar said in a statement.
Azar singled out the 2015 case of the drug Daraprim, whose price was famously hiked 5,000 percent by Martin Shkreli.
“Safe, select avenues for importation could be one of the answers to these challenges,” Azar said. In such situations, administration officials said, an imported alternative could provide a new avenue for competition to drive down prices. They added that importation would be limited to cases where drugs can be imported with adequate assurances of safety and effectiveness.
The importation move is the administration’s latest foray into the heated debate over drug pricing. Earlier this week, Novartis said it decided not to raise prices on its medicines in the United States for the rest of the year. And Pfizer recently agreed to defer substantial price increases on more than 40 medicines after its chief executive spoke with President Donald Trump. Thursday morning, the president tweeted thanks to Novartis and Pfizer for not increasing drug prices.
The FDA, commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement, could follow a similar path for drugs whose prices rise sharply. Price hikes, he said, “can create public health consequences that are similar to the occurrence of a drug shortage.” But any importation of foreign-approved drugs would be rare and temporary, until adequate competition emerged in the United States, he added.
Still, any move toward importation could scare big pharmaceutical companies, whose soaring drug prices have sparked disapproval from the White House. Even a minor easing of the importation ban could raise the prospect that the administration might be willing to use imported drugs to more broadly counter high drug prices in the United States.
Importation is staunchly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry and most Republicans. During the presidential campaign, Trump expressed support for the idea, but it wasn’t included in the administration’s recent proposal to bring down drug prices. Many Democrats are strong supporters of importation.
A 2003 law allows the importation of drugs from Canada if the Department of Health and Human Services certifies that such a move would not increase safety risks for patients and would cut costs for American consumers. So far, no HHS secretary has signed off on those conditions.